Systems which automatically distribute customer contacts or calls (generically referred to as “ACD”) are often employed in telemarketing environments in which agents at agent stations answer many different types of calls including telephone calls and other types of customer contacts (e.g., VoIP, emails, facsimile, chat room dialog, instant messages, other Internet contacts, etc.) from customers during a work day. As referred to herein, an ACD may be referred to as an automatic call distributor or an automatic contact distributor because the ACD handles a variety of communication media. In other words, the ACD handles many forms of communication, not just telephone calls in which a potential customer speaks with an agent. The term “ACD” may apply to any type of transaction processing system, and need not apply only to dedicated telemarketing systems or automatic call distributors. In some known ACD's, the agent may receive certain information about the type of customer call (i.e. contact) on a visual display at the agent set when a call or contact is distributed to the agent. An ACD is any such system which performs these functions and, for example, may employ a wide variety of architectures including integrated centralized systems, distributed systems, systems using one or more personal computers or servers, etc.
In some embodiments, ACD's may be used to support a number of different vendors in their telemarketing effort, and in such marketing environments, the agent is typically in communication with the customer or potential customer with respect to or on behalf of a particular vendor. The next contact that the agent processes may be on behalf of the same vendor or on behalf of a different vendor. In another embodiment, ACD's may be used exclusively by or on behalf of a single vendor such that all of the contacts processed by the agent involve one particular vendor.
Often, a customer call is distributed to an agent that involves interactive voice dialog. This means a normal two-way verbal exchange. An ACD, however, may also distribute a non-voice dialog contact or call to the agent. This does not involve direct two-way speech between the agent and the customer or caller. Non-voice dialog communication may be, for example, emails, facsimile, chat room dialog, instant messaging, Internet, etc. and the like. This is becoming more common as Internet traffic and electronic sales transactions increase. Handling of the non-voice dialog contact may require a specialized device or subcomponent of the ACD. In this situation, the agent may typically view text on a display screen that the caller typed in or transmitted. In response, the agent may provide information to the contact or request information from the caller, via the keyboard or other input device. Essentially, the dialog between the agent and the caller occurs on a display screen. Further, the agent may handle multiple calls. For example, the agent may typically handle two to five (or more) simultaneous non-voice dialog communications or transactions, which may be presented as two to five separate dialog windows on the display screen, which windows may, for example, be tiled or layered. Of course, the number of simultaneous transactions may vary significantly.
Regardless of whether the incoming call is text-based or voice-based, situations may arise where the agent would need the ability to immediately record the call. For example, criminal activity may occur, such as where a perpetrator calls in a “bomb-threat.” It would be desirable if the agent could immediately initiate recording of the incoming call to aid the authorities in apprehending the perpetrator. Alternatively, the agent may wish to record the call to preserve a record of an important transaction, such as a customer complaint or other matter.
Transaction processing systems typically have very limited recording capability. Some transaction processing systems include DAS cards (digital announcement source), which essentially “conference in” the incoming call with a recording circuit. The recording circuit digitizes the speech and saves the recorded conversation on the main hard disk of the transaction processing system. In such known systems, however, the number of simultaneous recordings is very limited. Typically, transaction processing systems cannot record more than four or five simultaneous conversations. Additionally, such systems do not record incoming contacts of a text-based nature. Further, separate recording and announcement circuits are required, thus increasing the cost and complexity of the system.
Further, recording capability in transaction processing systems is very limited with respect to recording time. This is because the recorded speech is stored on the main system hard disk, which is primarily directed to handling system needs. The system hard disk and associated operating systems of known transaction processing systems were not designed to store large amounts of digital recording, i.e., mass recording. Accordingly, such known systems limit the duration of such recordings to a few minutes.
Additionally, specialized processors and/or digital signal processors may be needed to process the recording of the call. Because the call may arrive in a variety of different formats, such as, ISDN, POTS, T1, and the like, and because such formats may be analog or digital in nature, conversion for storage may be relatively expensive and not easily transported from platform to platform. This adds expense and complexity to the transaction processing system.
For businesses where large capacity recording in needed, mass recording systems currently exist for those applications. Such mass recording systems are in widespread use, for example, in brokerage houses and police dispatch centers, such as 9-1-1 dispatch centers, where all incoming calls are recorded on reel-to-reel tape. Such systems, however, record all calls, and typically are connected to the incoming trunk line. As such, it may not possible to have the recording capability selectively turned on or off by the agent on demand, and for individually selectable incoming calls. Such known systems are either turned on globally, or turned off globally with respect to incoming calls, and such recording capability is not selectable by individual agents on demand.
A need exists to permit the agent of a transaction processing system to activate and deactivate system recording capability so that voice-dialog and text-dialog may be recorded.